Spelling games: an awkward example
English spelling is probably the worst nightmare of anyone involved in adult literacy – teachers and learners. The biggest challenge for any learner is to find out how they can learn: which strategies might work for each individual. i like spelling games, but i’ve yet to find the perfect example.
Recently Larry Ferlazzo reviewed a small program, “Take on the Teacher” ..it’s an interesting idea, with mixed results:
- => This one has a highly visual interface which is potentially engaging,
- => however it’s a strange characterisation of the teacher at the board (why pretend the visitor is challenging a teacher, when we are clearly taking on a computer program?)
- => and you’re right.. spelling programs need both audio and context (either visual or the classic “in a sentence”). Without context, words can have multiple meanings.. or be meaningless.
i was caught out on the word “baul”. i managed to select this word correctly as the incorrectly-spelled word.. but i was unsure if they wanted me to write “ball” or “bawl” as the correct version. Given that “tantrum” was in the list, i chose “bawl” (to cry loudly).
Wrong! Says the “teacher”. Surely a teacher would have more insight and flexibility than this machine script.
Dear reader, do you have any favourite screen-based spelling games? Applications that are less faulty than “take on the teacher”?
thanks and kind regards, michael
Links:
- Take on the Teacher Game, c/- someone in the UK (Scholastic? very hard to find their front page from this game)
- Larry Ferlazzo on “Learning Games“
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Sometimes we use games like Text-Twist (variants on Yahoo Games and Facebook) or Bookworm (ditto). There’s the same frustration of working with a machine, of course, and I’m suspicious of some of the words.
My personal favourite is an old version of Larry Parker’s Hangman 1.0 that used to be freeware and/or $15 US shareware. It’s an old dos desktop game from the late ’80s (I think) for VGA. But it has six word lists to choose from, all of which can be edited – by learners, quite easily – to create individualized spelling lists. (Putting it on multiple classroom desktops yields even more lists.) The hint function – which can also be edited – avoids the difficulty of words-without-context.
There are many other versions of hangman out there, but I’ve never seen one that was as flexible. Sadly, like many great DOS driven learning or text-based games – remember interactive fiction!?! – it seems impossible to find on the web nowadays.
Text Twist is an exciting game and it is also educational. this game can also help in spelling and vocabulary.;,~